At the end of a long, bleary season on Broadway, a burnt-out case ducks into a hole in the wall off Times Square, looking for a little sympathetic companionship. Soon enough, he finds it in a woman perched on top of a piano, wearing a little beret and an air of infinite jadedness.

To the tune of “C’est Magnifique,” she sings a few words, and our guy knows that she understands just how he feels: “Go smoke some crack, ’cause guess what just came back, ooh la la la, ‘Les Misérables.’ ” She’s rueful, amused, resigned and fatalistic in that special way that people are when they’ve been unlucky in love, but keep returning for more.

That nameless dame is incarnated by Carter Calvert in “Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging!,” the seminew revue at the Davenport Theater, and she has a few, highly entertaining friends who share her Rialto-weariness.

Image

Carter Calvert, left, and Scott Richard Foster in a parody of "The Bridges of Madison County."CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

These include Michelle Williams, the star of what’s described as “the revival of the revival of ‘Cabaret,’ ” who is embodied here by Mia Gentile and takes the microphone to ask: “What good is sitting through something that’s new? New shows don’t always pay. So they do ‘Cabaret,’ ol’ chum; let’s bring back ‘Cabaret.’ ”

Yeah, why not? Pour me another Jack, Jack, and one for that beautiful broad called Broadway, too. Jeez, remember when she was fun?

In the meantime, theatergoers feeling stung by a season of retreads can always drown their sorrows in song in the latest version of “Forbidden Broadway,” Gerard Alessandrini’s long-lived poison-pen valentine to this crazy, mixed-up business we call show. Mr. Alessandrini, who has taken the occasional sabbatical since he started his popular satire three decades ago, is sounding like he might be ready for another vacation.

Not that he’s lost his way with a zinger. This “Forbidden Broadway,” directed as usual by Phillip George and Mr. Alessandrini, has some choice observations to make about the deafening vocal stylings of Idina Menzel, the crudeness of “Bullets Over Broadway: The Musical” (“Yes, we have no composers, composers just get in the way”), the eternal coitus interruptus of “The Bridges of Madison County” and the inarticulateness of the slugger and the show named “Rocky.”

Image

Scott Richard Foster, left, and Marcus Stevens in a parody of "Rocky" from "Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging!"CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

But much of “Forbidden Broadway” exudes an oxymoronic air of spirited ennui, an awareness that there ain’t much in the way of inspiring creative targets these days. Mr. Alessandrini is focusing less on individual artists than on the practice of recycling by corporate-minded producers.

This is a show that features a rousing “Jersey Boys”-style ditty — to the tune of “December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” — that goes, “Oh what a blight, stealing songs from 1963.” The waltz from “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Cinderella’ ” now has the lyric, “Five decades ago I saw you, as a special on network TV.”

And the finale brings out a group of armband-wearing, briefcase-clutching fat cats with dead eyes singing a variation on “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” the Nazi anthem from “Cabaret.” Sample lyric:

“My job as the corporate fund-raising head

Is funding art safe as can be

And groundbreaking theater is fin’lly dead,

Image

From left, Marcus Stevens, Mia Gentile and Scott Richard Foster satirize "Pippin" in "Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging!"CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

And Broadway belongs to me.”

With an industrious cast that also includes Scott Richard Foster and Marcus Stevens, with David Caldwell at the piano, the show is dirgelike fun, rather in the spirit of a New Orleans jazz funeral. Mr. Alessandrini is not above recycling bits from previous shows, but on the other hand they remain — alas — eternally relevant.

As for those resuscitated war horses “Cabaret” and “Les Misérables,” they’re the gifts that keep on giving. Mr. Alessandrini hilariously manages to work in the changes in technology, as in a farewell to the show’s original turntable, that have altered a work that keeps coming back from the dead. “One Day More” has been retooled as “One Run More,” and the first-act curtain comes down on a full-throated chorus of “Do you hear the people sing, the same old songs go on and on.”

And for the “Cabaret” sequence, this production brings in not only Ms. Williams (“I come off rigid and dripping with gloom, I wipe every smile away”) but also the actress who immortalized the same part in the 1972 film. That’s Liza Minnelli, of course, and while Ms. Minnelli (played by Ms. Calvert) hasn’t really been on Broadway in a while, you can see why Mr. Alessandrini wanted her around.

For one thing, with her strong signature style, she is eminently imitable. But she is also that which Broadway honors most, an unbreakable survivor of a more glamorous age. To the melody of “So What?” from “Cabaret,” this Liza admits she doesn’t get the parts she used to and that she tends to shout every song now.

But she’s not defeated, she’s defiant, and even this imitation Liza makes you want to applaud yourself silly. Clearly, Mr. Alessandrini honors the embers in the ashes, wherever he finds them. Let’s just hope that by the next “Forbidden Broadway” he’ll actually have some incendiary new material to set ablaze.

Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging!

Davenport Theater

354 W. 45th St.

Midtown West

Category

Off Broadway, Comedy, Musical, Revue

Credits

Created and Written by Gerard Alessandrini, Directed by Gerard Alessandrini and Phillip George, Musical direction by David Caldwell